Oh
by rednecksaints
Summary: This short story provides a glimpse into Daryl's head after Beth is shot, as well as several vignette flashbacks from when they were together. I also included a happier ending. xx
The worst thing he could possibly feel was creeping along his skin like spiders on a web. Loss. It ate at his bones, licking them like fire. It was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. He'd lost people before- he'd lost his brother- but something about this was different. One second, she was there. And now, she was just gone.

What had he done to bring this upon himself? He'd never wanted to feel in the first place. Keeping people at a distance was his forte, but she'd broken his barrier. She'd torn down the walls that surrounded his heart and his mind, burrowing deep and latching on with innocence and a sense of security unlike anything he'd ever known. Was it possible to take it all back? Could he blink and somehow wake up, realizing it was all a dream?

A terrible nightmare.

A horrific thought.

Not real or true.

No.

This pain was real. He knew that. It didn't make sense that losing someone could physically hurt. His muscles seized at his core. They sent shudders of heartbreak up and down his spine. Over and over again. He was losing his breath. He was blind from the tears. Silently, he prayed that the salt in his eyes would wash over his entire body, sweeping him away from the earth and on to her. Wherever she was.

 _It did happen_ , he reminded himself. _Everything that happened between us, it was real._

 _I was falling in love with her._

He hadn't understood it at first, but he'd felt the pull toward her-that ache inside that told him to open up. To let her in.

 _I love her_ _,_ he thought.

With tremendous effort, he lifted himself off the ground. He'd placed her body among the flowers. They were the color of her hair, bright and golden yellow. Tiny rays of sun illuminated her face. Her features remained quiet and still. Eerily _still_. Why had it taken him so long to realize she was beautiful? Something so fragile didn't belong in this world. It was a cruel joke to believe that it was all for a reason. She'd believed it, but could he? Now that she couldn't remind him to be good, would he be able to live as that person? She saw it in him, even when he didn't. She'd helped him become everything he didn't think he could be, and now he was nothing.

He couldn't be anything without her.

Flashes of the moments they shared came to him in giant waves. They crashed against him, slowly corroding what remained of the hope he'd found. If he closed his eyes long enough, he could still see her smile. He could still feel the nerves of awkwardness and sparks that shot between them. Something had been happening. Something had been building, but now it was broken. She was the light at the end of the tunnel, but someone came along and blew it out. He'd never forget it, and he most certainly would never forgive.

The others were beginning to scatter. He could still hear the cries of her sister in the distance. It was a mournful sob that didn't sound human. It was guttural and crushing. It wasn't that he couldn't understand their pain- after all, they'd lost her too- but it was different for him. They'd lost _someone_. For him, he'd lost _everything_. No one else would ever know how close he'd come to feeling alive. Could he ever find that again? Would he ever want to?

Each step back to the group felt like bricks weighing him down to the earth. One wrong move and he would fall through the sinking ground. Down, down, down. He was already being swallowed by grief, what would a little dirt do to him now? He'd be with her. They'd share a grave together. Something inside him was already dead, so what would it matter if he actually was? It was just a technicality. One shot through the skull, just like her. That's all it would take. They'd truly be able to feel each other's pain.

But he couldn't do that. She wouldn't want him to.

And he was too much of a coward to try.

 **BEFORE**

"Golfers like to booze it up, right?"

They'd been hiking through the tall grass for at least an hour, trying to find a source of alcohol for her first drink. He didn't understand it- to him it felt pretty stupid, wasting all that time when they could be looking for food or shelter- but he followed her anyway. Something inside pulled him along after her, and after the first few minutes of wandering in the open, he stopped thinking about what was going to happen next. He walked behind her, watching her hair bounce across her shoulders and wondering why he hadn't noticed how pretty it was before. She didn't have a normal head of blonde. It was a complicated mixture of dark and light strands, each of them cascading down her back and catching the light whenever she moved. She was young, but he began to notice how determined she was and how the way she walked with motivation made her look older. She was stronger than he expected. It had taken him by surprise just how well she'd handled herself so far. He was impressed but not completely sold. After all, the loss of her father hadn't quite hit her with full force just yet, and he knew that when it did, she would probably crumble. Their mission to find a drink was merely a distraction from her pain, and he knew that.

 _The longer we can drag this out the better_ , he thought to himself. _Maybe I need a bit of a distraction, too._

They made their way inside the clubhouse, stepping carefully over decaying bodies and piles of discarded possessions. There were sleeping bags and clothes lines with laundry draped across from end to end all along the room. It'd been awhile since anyone living had disturbed the area. Dust caked everything. He watched each footprint mold beneath him as he followed her into the next room.

When they finally found a stash, the look on her face wasn't relief or even joy. She'd reached the end of her mission. Now there wasn't anything left to do but drink, and maybe forget. She climbed onto one of the bar stools and searched for a clean glass. While she fumbled around on the counter, he kept himself busy with a set of darts. There wasn't a board, so he tossed them at various portraits on the wall. Most of them stuck, but with his last shot he was caught off guard by a small whimper. She hadn't found anything to her liking, so she sat very still, clutching at the bottle of Peach Schnapps with both hands. Her face was taut, and he could tell she was on the verge of tears.

 _Here it comes,_ he prepared himself.

But when it came, he wasn't annoyed like he'd anticipated. She looked so small. Her heart was on her sleeve and it was breaking into a thousand little pieces. In that moment, he was overwhelmed with the urge to pick them all up and glue them back together. Someone so good shouldn't have to feel something so bad. It wasn't fair.

He huffed in a breath and marched to where she sat. He grabbed the bottle from her hand and smashed it on the ground, not thinking twice about the commitment he'd just made.

"I ain't gonna have your first drink be no damn Peach Schnapps."

She looked at him with wild eyes. She was no doubt confused by his sudden action, but he brushed it off and headed for the door.

"Come on," he instructed. She stood up, following his lead out the door.

"What is it?"

"Moonshine."

He wanted to laugh at her inexperience. Most girls her age would have plenty of drunk party stories to tell by this point in their life, but not her. She'd been raised in a house where alcohol had been abused- not unlike his own upbringing- so she'd chosen to stay away from it, and he could respect that.

They sat in the house for a long time, sipping on their drinks and swapping confessions through the game "I Never". He was worried about what she might think, knowing that he wasn't the mysterious man everyone else thought him to be. He'd never done anything special, and he didn't have a meaningful story about how he'd gotten this far. He was a loser. Nothing about him was impressive, but she kept prying, and he kept telling her what she wanted to know. When she asked if he'd never been in jail, something within him snapped to attention.

"Is that what you think of me?"

She looked bashful, like she wanted to take it back. "I didn't mean anything serious. I just thought, you know, like the drunk tank. Even my dad got locked up for that back in the day."

He examined her, waiting to see if her expression would change. "Drink up."

She was calm, and he could tell she didn't mean it to be an insult, but he couldn't take it. He got up to piss, but accidently knocked over one of the glasses in the floor. He covered his clumsiness by tossing the one in his hand, and it landed with a shattering crash. He knew the noise would attract unwanted visitors, but he lost himself in his frustration. He found himself yelling at her without realizing it. His voice had reached an octave that wasn't intentional, but he wouldn't pull it back. He'd stepped over the line, and now he couldn't go back. He was making her nervous, and every time he lunged with his words she reflexively jerked away from him. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her outside, forcing her to watch as he taunted the walker that had been hovering outside the house. He'd never seen her this angry. Before he could reload his crossbow, she'd stepped in front of his target and ended its miserable life with one solid stab to the skull.

"What the hell'd you do that for? I was having fun."

"No, you were being a jackass! If anyone found my dad…"

"That ain't remotely the same."

She was right to throw that in his face, but he couldn't think about him. Not when his blood pressure was skyrocketing and everything that had happened in the last thirty-six hours was rushing through his mind like a freight train.

"What do you want from me, girl?"

"I want to you stop acting like you don't give a crap about anything. Like nothing we went through matters. Like none of the people we lost meant anything to you. It's bullshit!"

"Is that what you think?"

"That's what I know."

She didn't know. She couldn't know how much he was hurting inside. It was killing him to stand there and look into her tear-filled eyes.

"You don't know nothing."

"I know you look at me and you just see another dead girl…. I survived and you don't get it 'cause I'm not like you or them. But I made it, and you don't get to treat me like crap just because you're afraid."

"I ain't afraid of nothing."

 _Except you_ , he thought.

Soon he was lost. His regret and his guilt overtook him, and he was but a quivering shell. He felt her arms wrap around him as he sobbed. It hurt more than fire. All of his emotions burned deep in his gut, and her embrace felt like cool water.

They were sitting on the front porch. Several hours had passed and all the fight and the tears were dried up. He didn't have anything left, so they sat in the stillness of the night, listening to the crickets and the empty silence. It was just the two of them, and oddly enough that gave him a sense of comfort. If this was how it was going to be for the rest of their lives, he wouldn't mind. This girl had ripped out his innermost demons and scattered them in front of him like toys on the ground. He mentally made a note to step on each and every one of them- to break them, so they'd never work inside him again.

The conversation lingered into the dead of night. It was becoming more and more apparent to him that he could no longer look at her and consider her to be a child. She'd blossomed and bloomed right in front of his eyes, and he wanted to groom her. He wanted to protect that little ray of hope that burrowed inside her chest. Her heart was bigger than the entire world, and he couldn't imagine the thought of anyone trying to smother is.

If she was a fire, he would let her burn.

"You're gonna be the last man standing."

 _I don't wanna be_ , he thought. _Not without you._

The way she looked at him with those big blue eyes, it was making his own heart melt. Her fire was too hot. Who was he kidding? He couldn't survive that kind of torture. Falling for her was like walking directly into a flame. But the burn felt so goddamn good… he couldn't walk away.

 _What have you done to me?_ he thought. _What am I supposed to do now?_

"We should go inside."

The heat between them was becoming too intense. He meant to merely change the subject. To go back inside the house and maybe rest his head for awhile. Maybe listen to her tell stories about the things she'd never done. He liked hearing about her wishes and dreams. He wanted to one day help them come true.

"We should burn it down."

It wasn't what he'd expected, but no sooner than the words escaped her lips, he was planning. He recognized what she was doing, and he jumped on board. This was symbolic. This was a way of escape.

 _Places like this, you've gotta put it away,_ she'd said. _Or it destroys you. Here._

She'd placed her hand over her heart. He'd watched her slim fingers gracefully fall and rest against her chest. This was what she'd been talking about. He was going to destroy this place before it had a chance to destroy him.

They sent the house up in flames, and as they walked away he had an overwhelming urge to do something he hadn't done in a long time. He smiled.

Enough time had passed to make it easier when the memories crept upon them. Like when they found the grave marked for a "beloved father", he felt her stop for a moment and surrender to the sadness, but it didn't cripple her. She'd reached for his hand, and their fingers laced together like two threads in a tapestry. He had never felt a bond so real and so comforting. It felt safe. He could relax into it and never once feel unsure or afraid.

He listened to her sing.

He gave her small reassuring touches, carrying her into the house and gently placing a hand on her shoulder to guide her where he wanted her to go. All of the small things added up to this one particular moment. They were sitting at the kitchen table in the funeral home they'd discovered the day prior. It was dark. They'd shared their second meal and were preparing to wind down from the day. She decided to leave a note for the people that may or may not return, and he felt her kind spirit from across the table. It leapt into him like an unstoppable force, so he clung to it.

"Maybe we stick around here for awhile."

He wanted to build something. For the first time since they lost the jail, he could see some stability in his future. And in that vision she was there. Standing next to him the entire time.

"So you do think there are still good people around. What changed your mind?"

He couldn't answer her. He could, but it would mean having to admit what he was feeling. He still wasn't sure whether or not the emotion could be trusted. It hadn't appeared with anyone else before. It was overpowering and all consuming. The feeling passed through him like an earthquake, shattering his emotions as fine as shards of glass. Words were lost on him, but she focused her gaze directly into his eyes and waited. They shared a long look, then finally, she understood.

"Oh."

It was her. She'd changed his mind.

She'd changed everything.

When he thought he'd lost her, he ran for what felt like an eternity trying to catch her. There was no end in sight, but it didn't stop him from pushing forward. He was tired and mentally exhausted, but emotionally he was something close to numb. He didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to come to the realization that they were so close to finding something only to have it snatched away.

Then, he found her.

The group made a plan to make a trade, and it worked up until the very last second.

 _She was tough_ , he'd told Maggie. _She didn't know it, but she was._

Her bravery got the best of her. She'd tried to make a stand, and it backfired. Right through her skull. There wasn't a chance to blink it away before he felt himself reaching for his gun and firing at the person responsible. He was in a blind rage. Nothing had ever broken him like this. Nothing in the entire history of the world had ever hurt like this.

He saw the pool of blood flow out around her on the ground. He saw the blank expression on her face. He saw the ghost of the last words she'd uttered on the edge of her lips.

 _I get it now._

She didn't get it. There was no way she understood the ramifications of her decision. It was completely selfish of him to think this way, but he was angry. He was furious that she would leave him after what they'd been through. After what they'd built together. But then he picked her up, and his resolved faded away. His anger melted as the last remaining flicker of fire in her heart went out. In that moment, she was gone, and everything bright that had bloomed inside him went along with her.

 **AFTER**

They'd been safe for several months. The community found its rhythm, and they started to build a steady life within the walls. He never found his rhythm. He'd allowed himself to feel it, just like Carol had told him to do, but that wasn't enough. He might have cried out all the tears, but there was still so much left inside that wouldn't come out. Loneliness. Heartbreak. Fear. And regret. So much regret. The others tried to help coax it out of him, but it was no use. He'd continue to walk around like a ghost and simply go through the motions of living day after day. It didn't matter if the sun was shining. She was the sunlight, so without her it meant nothing.

That's when it happened.

It was a beautiful day by anyone else's standards. They'd just come back from striking a deal with the Hilltop. He collapsed onto a bed that still didn't feel like his own and watched the shadows of the others move across his ceiling from outside the window. The sun was beginning to set, creating an eerie orange glow in the room. It distracted his thoughts enough that he didn't hear the screams at first, but then they grew louder. His first fear was that Negan's group had come looking for payback. He grabbed his crossbow and ran to the door, but stopped short when he saw the commotion outside.

It wasn't screams of terror that he'd heard before. They were screams of joy. A small group was crowded outside his house, fawning over a girl with blond hair. She was covered in dirt and blood, but it wasn't the disheveled state of her that caught his attention. It was her eyes. They looked up at spotted him standing in the doorway, and in that split second, he was reborn.

Several agonizing seconds passed before she took a tentative step forward. She placed a foot on the bottom step and slowly ascended up to the porch. He was no longer holding his crossbow. It dropped to the ground without him realizing it, and he didn't care. He paid no mind to the dozens of people watching and waiting to see what was happening. No one else would understand. They might have scolded him on what he was about to do, but all concern flew out the window along with his pride. He allowed himself to be completely selfish. She reached out and placed one small hand against his cheek, and he folded himself into it, pressing his lips against her palm.

"You're… you're alive."

His voice was close to embarrassing, cracking and reaching a pitch higher than usual. His girl was back. _My girl._

"Did you miss me?"

If he was a different sort of man, he would have been slightly upset by such a blase comment, but because of who he was - who she'd made him to be - he let out a laugh and a smile.

"Beth."

Her name was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted. That is, until she fell into his arms. Until she lifted her chin and met her lips to his. That kiss trumped it all. He was done for. He was addicted. He was completely and utterly in love with her.

"Don't leave me," he whispered against her lips. "Not again."

She rested forehead against his. "Not ever."


End file.
